SAFFORD, Ariz. -- Eighth-grader Savana Redding was scared and
confused when an assistant principal searching for drugs ordered her
out of math class, searched her backpack and then instructed an
administrative aide and school nurse to conduct a strip search.

"I went into the nurse's office and kept following what they asked
me to do," Savana, now 19, recalls of the incident six years ago
that she says still leaves her shaken and humiliated. "I thought,
'What could I be in trouble for?'"

That morning, another student had been caught with
prescription-strength ibuprofen and had told the assistant
principal, Kerry Wilson, that she'd gotten the pills from Savana.
The nurse and administrative assistant, both women, were alone with
Savana in the nurse's office when they asked the girl to take off
her shoes and socks, then her shirt and pants. The two women then
asked Savana to pull open her bra and panties so they could see
whether she was hiding any pills. None was found.

Drug searches, along with drug tests for students in athletics and
other extracurricular activities, have become common in schools
across the nation, but the search of Savana at Safford Middle School
on Oct. 8, 2003, ignited a legal dispute that has landed before the
U.S. Supreme Court -- and could transform the landscape of drug
searches in public schools.

On Tuesday, the nine justices will hear Safford officials' appeal of
a lower court's decision that said the administrators violated
Savana's constitutional rights and should be held financially
responsible.

Attorneys for the Safford school district, about 80 miles east of
Tucson in the Pinaleno Mountains, portray the school as "on the
front lines of a decades-long war against drug abuse among students"
and defend the search of Savana as necessary.

They echo the concerns of administrator groups nationwide who say
increasingly younger students are experimenting with drugs and are
abusing prescription and over-the-counter drugs.

They cite a 2006 Office of National Drug Control Policy report that
said more than 2.1 million teens abused prescription drugs in 2005
and that youths ages 12-17 abused prescription drugs more than any
other illicit drug except marijuana.

If the Supreme Court upholds the search, it will give administrators
broad discretion on drug searches across the board.

( CNS ) The tough shell of secrecy that protected the Hells Angels in
Quebec for years finally cracked during an investigation that has
produced the arrests of almost the gang's entire membership in Quebec.

Canwest News Service has learned the key to the investigation that
generated the arrests of 123 people Wednesday in Operation SharQc
involved a full-patch member of the gang who turned informant, an
extremely rare occurrence in Quebec.

According to two sources familiar with the investigation, Sylvain
Boulanger, a former sergeant-at-arms in the gang's Sherbrooke
chapter, supplied investigators with information about an important
vote the gang's membership across the province held in July 1994.

Hells Angels across Quebec essentially voted in favour of engaging
in the bloody turf war, with rival gangs such as the Rock Machine
and Dark Circle, that ran from 1994 to 2002 and involved the deaths
of more than 160 people, including several innocent victims.

At least two other informants, Martin Roy and another man, both
former underlings in the gang's vast drug trafficking network, gave
evidence in support of the investigation. The fact that Roy was an
informant was already revealed in Operation South, an investigation
that produced the arrests of several Hells Angels in Montreal a few
years ago.

In past investigations, the Regional Integrated Squads who
investigate biker gangs could only rely on underlings such as Roy
for inside information. Having an actual full-patch member supply
information about the gang's operation has not been witnessed in
decades. A few Hells Angels ditched their loyalty to the gang after
the 1985 Lennoxville Purge, when the gang killed five of its own
members at a bunker near Sherbrooke, Que. But since then, getting a
Hells Angel to ditch his colours and turn his back against a gang
that demands fierce loyalty appeared to be impossible in Quebec.

Wednesday's roundup represented an unprecedented strike against one
of the biggest criminal organizations in the province with 111
full-patch Hells Angels arrested or sought on arrest warrants.

Barack Obama, the U. S. President, and Mexican leader Felipe
Calderon vowed to tackle Mexico's violent drug cartels together at
the start of Mr. Obama's brief, but symbolic first visit south of
the border.

It was also his first trip to Latin America since taking office in
January and the first to Mexico by a U. S. president in 12 years.

He was greeted by a sea of screaming schoolchildren, waving U. S.
and Mexican flags, at the presidential residence Los Pinos, before
talks with Mr. Calderon, who has gambled his presidency on the
battle against traffickers.

"At a time when the Mexican government has so courageously taken on
the drug cartels that have plagued both sides of the border, it is
absolutely critical that the United States joins as a full partner
in dealing with this issue ... also on our side of the border in
dealing with the flow of guns and cash south," Mr. Obama said.

On the eve of his visit, Mr. Obama slapped sanctions on three drug
cartels and named a top U. S. official to stiffen enforcement on the
southern border.

A defense attorney will appeal a Livingston County judge's decision
that the state's new medical marijuana law does not retroactively
apply to his client, who allegedly grew marijuana in his backyard
for medicinal purposes.

Judge David Reader's ruling is the first in the state to test a law
passed in November by 63 percent of the voters and which went into
full effect April 4 when the Michigan Department of Community Health
began accepting applications from patients and caregivers seeking
registry identification cards under the law.

Farmington Hills defense attorney Barry Resnick said he will appeal
the decision.

Ryan Andrew Burke was charged with possession of marijuana with
intent to deliver, a four-year felony, and a misdemeanor charge of
possession of marijuana after undercover narcotics officers received
a tip Aug. 18 that he was growing marijuana at his Pine Hill Trail
home.

Police say they found 13 marijuana plants in 23-year-old Burke's
backyard as well as remnants of marijuana in three bags of discarded
garbage.

Activists want the government to tell the truth about medical
cannabis. The government maintains it has the right to lie. The
court case continues.

The Obama administration has announced the deputy director of the
Office of National Drug Control Policy. And, the chorus of voices
calling for a real debate about drug policy continues to grow. This
week that chorus included a retired DEA agent as well as a convicted
smuggler.

A medical marijuana advocacy group and the Obama administration
argued Tuesday before a federal appeals court in San Francisco over
a private citizen's right to force the government to correct alleged
misstatements - in this case, about the therapeutic properties of
pot.

Americans for Safe Access filed suit in San Francisco two years ago
under the Information Quality Act, a federal law that allows members
of the public to "seek and obtain correction" of false or misleading
government information that affects them.

The organization said its members include seriously ill people who
had been discouraged from using marijuana by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services' long-standing position that the drug has
no medical value. The department declined to respond to the suit,
saying the Drug Enforcement Administration was still considering the
advocacy group's 2002 request to reconsider the status of marijuana.

On Tuesday, a Justice Department lawyer told the Ninth U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals that the law allowing private citizens to seek
correction of government misinformation can't be enforced in court.

Congress created "no judicially enforceable rights" when it passed
the Information Quality Act in 2000, said attorney Alisa Klein. She
said the law requires only that a federal agency review such
requests from members of the public; otherwise, she said, courts
would be flooded with demands to second-guess government decisions
on countless subjects.

The government's position would make the law meaningless, argued
Alan Morrison, the lawyer for Americans for Safe Access. Although
some disputes are too subjective for court intervention, he said,
others can be measured objectively - for example, "two plus two is
four and not five" - and the law gives judges a role in keeping the
government on track.

PHILADELPHIA -- In another clear break from past policy, President
Obama announced Friday that he intended to nominate as the nation's
No. 2 drug czar a scientist often considered the No. 1 researcher on
addiction and treatment.

A. Thomas McLellan, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist, will
be charged with reducing demand for drugs, a part of the
foreign-supply-and-domestic-demand equation that many policy experts
say has been underemphasized for years.

"We're blown away. He understands," said Stephen J. Pasierb,
president and chief executive of the Partnership for a Drug-Free
America, that addiction "is a parent, a family, a child issue."

If confirmed by the Senate, McLellan will be deputy director of the
Office of National Drug Control Policy, which advises the president
and coordinates anti-drug efforts. Obama last month nominated
Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske to head the office.

Kerlikowske's reputation for innovative approaches to law
enforcement and McLellan's stature as a treatment scientist make
them "a perfect match," Pasierb said.

Although hardly known outside his field, McLellan is regarded as a
leading researcher on a range of addiction-related issues.

As a scientist at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in
Philadelphia in the 1980s, he led development of two measures, known
as the addiction severity index and treatment services review, that
characterized multiple dimensions of substance abuse. The tools,
used worldwide, help determine the type and duration of treatment.

Professor George W. Grayson's new book, "Mexico's Struggle With
Drugs and Thugs," could not be more timely. It is a must read to
understand what is going on in Mexico today.

We are bombarded with news stories of the unprecedented violence in
Mexico, particularly in the northern border areas along the United
States. The situation is commonly referred to as a war, and
commentators speculate daily whether Mexico will deteriorate into a
failed state, with unthinkable consequences for the United States.

[snip]

Grayson poses two questions about the prospects for U.S.-Mexican
relations. (1) Continue the war on drugs? ( 2 ) Think about the
unthinkable: decriminalization? He provides discussion questions for
students and groups in a "talking it over" section that's followed
by an annotated reading list.

An appendix describes in detail eight Mexican cartels with an
accurate assessment of their strength and the challenge both
governments face. The reader can quickly grasp the seriousness of
the situation.

Professor Grayson has produced a book that is a must read for all of
us concerned with this issue.

I was one of the "masterminds" behind the importation and sale of
approximately 75 tons of pot from Southeast Asia to the U.S. in 1986
and 1987. It was the culmination of a 20-year career as a drug
smuggler, a deal that netted in excess of $180 million wholesale.
And the only thing the government got out of those drug hauls was
the sales tax from the cash my gang spent. There were, of course,
some financial forfeitures once my gang was finally rounded up some
years later. However, had rational minds prevailed over the past
70-plus years, the U.S. government would have reaped huge benefits
from organizations like ours.

But no. Rather than accept the fact that some 30 million Americans
cannot possibly be criminals, our society has squandered almost a
trillion dollars in a futile effort to stop drug use.

We're hearing a lot about drug-related violence in Mexico these
days. But listening to the news recently, I heard of a police sweep
in Toronto-where I live some months out of the year. The operation
involved more than 1,000 police officers and netted, among other
things, a vast quantity of firearms, including loaded AK-47s,
sawed-off shotguns and 34 handguns, none of which were obtained
legally. These weapons came from the United States and were smuggled
north. Here is how it works ( I know firsthand ): Canadian gangs
grow pot in apartment buildings, putting everyone who lives there in
danger. Once harvested, the pot is traded to U.S. gangs for cocaine
and guns. America's arcane drug laws provide the currency for these
gangs to exist.

South of the border, it's even worse. Some analysts say Mexico is on
the slipperiest of slopes toward becoming a failed state, and
illegal drugs are playing a huge part. Drug traffickers are able to
operate only because they have currency. Take away the currency, you
take away the drug traffickers.

In my days in that business, guns were nowhere to be found. Now,
however, I cannot imagine anyone being in the trade without a gun.
It has to stop, but how?

Canadians have no constitutional right to the privacy of the trash
they set outside for collection, as a Calgary man learned Thursday.

Russell Stephen Patrick will have to begin serving a four-year
prison sentence after the Supreme Court of Canada, in a7-0 decision,
ruled he had no right to privacy after police, during a 2003
investigation, picked through his trash on the curb.

Patrick, convicted of producing and trafficking ecstasy, argued in a
court hearing last fall that police violated his rights against
unreasonable search and seizure when they rummaged through his
rubbish in the middle of the night, obtaining enough evidence to
obtain a warrant to search his home which led to the charges.

The former University of Calgary swimming star, who once held
national and world records, was sentenced to four years in prison in
2006.

The Supreme Court of Canada said yesterday that governments have the
right to sift through personal garbage once it reaches your property
line, concluding a classic contest over property rights.

In a 7-0 ruling, the court said the rubbish is fair game for police,
tax investigators or any other government scrutineer.

The decision means that Russell Patrick, a former record-holding
swimmer on the Canadian swim team, will spend four years in prison
for drug offences that came to light after police snatched garbage
bags from behind his Calgary home on Dec. 17, 2003.

They might still get calls for dope, but some North Vancouver drug
dealers will find it harder to deliver as police crack down on
dial-a-dopers by seizing their cars.

In the past two weeks, North Vancouver RCMP have arrested and
charged five alleged street-level dealers, seizing not only their
drugs and money but their wheels. Thirteen charges were laid.

"Five arrests in the last two weeks -- we're pretty happy with
that," said RCMP Cpl. Sue Tupper, who heads North Vancouver's crime
reduction unit. "With the first three arrests, we basically smashed
their drug line and disabled them ... at least temporarily."

Dial-a-dope lines operate much like a pizza delivery service.
Customers call a designated drug number and organize a meeting at a
specific location. The dealer then sends runners out to deliver the
dope.

Tupper said police hope to put a dent in street-level drug crime by
hitting dealers in the pocketbook and making it hard for runners to
deliver the drugs.

"It's a pain for them when this happens," she said. "That's the
bottom line for them, the dollars."

In the latest arrest, Soroosh Nassimdoost, 26, was charged with
possession of a controlled substance and possession for trafficking.
Police also seized his leased Honda.

Town Hall meeting set for April 22, 7 p.m., at Nativity Hall, 301
McConnell Ave.

The city's controversial drug search warrant sign program is on hold
after local police recently submitted their side of the story to the
provincial privacy commission.

Chief Dan Parkinson of the Cornwall Community Police Service said
only "a half-dozen" of the real estate-like signs were planted in
Cornwall before he halted the initiative not only to appease civil
libertarians, but to get feedback from the community in the form of
a town hall style meeting.

"It's out of an abundance of caution and sensitivity," said
Parkinson, who launched the sign program in January to visibly
publicize execution of drug search warrants.

The catalyst for the search warrant signs was actually town hall
meetings held more than a year ago.

The message Parkinson got from the community was mainly a question:
What are police doing to stop crime?

New Hampshire is pondering becoming the 14th state to regulate
medicinal cannabis, in the face of the usual dire predictions from
the usual opponents.

Now that the Obama administration has pledged to tolerate medicinal
cannabis dispensaries in compliance with state regulations, the "next
step" may be cash-strapped municipal governments muscling in on the
action.

A new study has found that smoking cannabis may make smoking tobacco
worse for you. Another good reason, short of criminal sanctions, to
not smoke tobacco.

It may be a little disconcerting to some veteran cannabis law
reformers to have their arguments finally taken seriously and
repeated in the mainstream media.

CONCORD - Wheelchair-bound Clayton Holden, 23, said that at least 10
times, police in this state have approached but never arrested him for
smoking marijuana.

"They took one look at me, one look at my condition, and they tell me
to be careful and have a good day," Holden told the Senate Health and
Human Services Committee on Tuesday.

Since he was 10, Holden has suffered from Duchene Muscular Dystrophy
and found using marijuana dulls the chronic pain and allows him to
have to use less other medication to function.

Holden spoke near the close of a three-hour hearing on a controversial
bill to legalize the use of marijuana for those with a "debilitating
medical condition."

Strong opposition from a state prosecutor and State Police lieutenant
interrupted a steady stream of patients, supportive legislators and
advocates, all of whom want to make New Hampshire the 14th state to
legalize medical use of marijuana.

The House of Representatives passed the bill (HB 648) by a healthy
margin last month.

Gov. John Lynch said he's concerned that marijuana possession would
remain against the law but has declined to say whether he would veto
this bill if the state Senate passed it.

Assistant Attorney General Karin Eckel testified Tuesday that this
effort is a stalking horse for those who want to more broadly legalize
marijuana use.

"Clearly if this bill is passed into law, it will only fuel the
growing, largely unregulated criminal enterprise that is sweeping our
country under the guise of medical marijuana," Eckel said.

San Francisco would be the first city in the nation to sell and
distribute medical marijuana under legislation proposed Tuesday by
Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi.

Mirkarimi, who spearheaded legislation more than three years ago to
regulate the city's proliferating medical marijuana dispensaries,
asked the city attorney to craft a measure that would create a pilot
program for medical cannabis sales. The details are still being worked
out, Mirkarimi said, but he envisions a pilot program under which the
Department of Public Health could distribute pot to medical marijuana
patients of city clinics.

Mirkarimi called the legislation the "next step" toward codifying the
state laws that legalized medical marijuana, adding that he wanted to
introduce the legislation in 2005 when the city was passing the laws
regulating the city's marijuana clubs. But he said he waited out of
concern that federal law does not recognize California's legalization
of medical marijuana.

However, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced last month that
federal authorities would prosecute only "those people who violate
both federal and state law," implying that the government no longer
would try to shut down California pot dispensaries.

"We're spending much more money keeping marijuana underground, trying
to hide a fact that is occurring all around us," Mirkarimi said. "Now
is the time to take responsibility for something we've deflected to
others and to test our ability to take responsibility."

Mayor Gavin Newsom's office wasn't so sure. Although the mayor
supports medical marijuana, Newsom has said he does not favor efforts
to legalize pot, and his office was noncommittal about the proposal
for the city to sell it.

"The mayor will have to hash this out with public health officials,"
press secretary Nathan Ballard said. "It's the mayor's job to weed out
bad legislation. And to be blunt, this sounds pretty bad."

Smokers who light up an occasional joint may be putting themselves at
a dramatically higher risk of developing chronic lung disease,
according to a new study by Canadian researchers.

The findings indicate that marijuana, even in small doses, seems to
accelerate the harmful effects of smoking and greatly boosts
respiratory problems and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
The disease, which is often caused by smoking, actually encompasses a
few disorders, including chronic bronchitis and emphysema. People with
COPD often have difficulty breathing and shortness of breath, and
experience increased coughing. It's one of the leading causes of death
in Canada.

In the study, published today in the Canadian Medical Association
Journal, researchers found that, as expected, smokers were at an
increased risk of developing COPD. But that risk was much higher among
those who smoked cigarettes as well as marijuana, according to Wan Tan
of the James Hogg iCapture Centre for Cardiovascular and Pulmonary
Research, based at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver.

"Smoking marijuana and cigarettes is harmful for your lungs even in
small amounts if you smoke them together," said Dr. Tan, who is the
study's lead author.

But the risk of developing COPD was not heightened among those study
participants who said they smoked only marijuana.

Marijuana has been a part of the American cultural landscape for
nearly a century, tried by millions - including, apparently, the last
three presidents and the current California governor.

So why has it taken so long to arrive at a political moment of truth -
- a full national debate about the legalization, taxation and
regulation of cannabis?

Experts say an unprecedented confluence of factors might finally be
driving a change on a topic once seen as politically too hot to
handle.

Among them: the recession-fueled need for more public revenue,
increased calls to redirect scarce law enforcement, court and prison
resources, and a growing desire to declaw powerful and violent Mexican
drug cartels. Also in the mix is a public opinion shift driven by a
generation of Baby Boomers, combined with some new high-profile calls
for legislation - including some well-known conservative voices
joining with liberals.

Leading conservatives like former Secretary of State George Shultz and
the late economist Milton Friedman years ago called for legalization
and a change in the strategy in the war on drugs. This year mainstream
pundits like Fox News' Glenn Beck and CNN's Jack Cafferty have
publicly questioned the billions spent each year fighting the endless
war against drugs and to suggest it now makes more financial and
social sense to tax and regulate marijuana.

"It's a combination of all these things coming together at once and
producing that 'aha' moment," said Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the
Marijuana Policy Project, who for years has monitored the wavering
political winds on the subject. He says so much has changed in recent
months that "for the first time in my adult lifetime, it looks
possible."

"If you'd asked me 10 years ago - or three years ago - I would have
said it will be a long, slow slog," he said. "And now, it looks like
it might happen faster than any of us believed."

A national talk about marijuana decriminalization in Mexico this
week, as the Mexican Congress debates "legalizing marijuana for
personal use". The timing of the Congressional debate - immediately
before U.S. President Obama arrived for talks - seems designed to
send a message to the colossus north of the border. The idea of
legalization has been gaining strength in Mexico as the
U.S.-financed drug war escalation by Mexican President Calderon
fails and backfires spectacularly.

A piece from Ottawa Citizen columnist Dan Gardner this week
highlights the possibilities for drug legalization - "the most
straightforward way to reduce demand, of course," according to
political scientist Francis Fukuyama. While drug prohibitionists may
suppose legalization is a remote possibility, the same was true of
alcohol prohibition a few short years before it too, was repealed.
"The history of politics is stuffed with such transformation," notes
Gardner.

From the U.K.'s Financial Times newspaper, author Clive Cook gives
an overview of the "criminally stupid" regime of drug prohibition in
the U.S. The "country's implacable blend of prohibition and punitive
criminal justice is wrong-headed in every way: immoral in principle,
since it prosecutes victimless crimes, and in practice a disaster of
remarkable proportions," yet politicians can't stop ratcheting up
drug-punishments all the same. "The consequences of prohibition
corrupt governments everywhere, and the U.S. is no exception," notes
Cook.

And finally from Colombia, ultra-right President Alvaro Uribe may
not be able to stop drugs in any way shape or form, but he seems to
have discovered a way to get Colombians to take more marijuana. You
see, Colombians may legally possess up to 20 grams of cannabis, and
have been able to do so since 1993. But only 2.3 percent of
Colombians use cannabis - as compared to 5.8 percent of Americans
who regularly take cannabis illegally. Uribe has been itching to
remove Colombian citizens' right to take cannabis for years, but now
appears to have growing political backing for a forced-treatment
bill re-criminalizing marijuana users there. "Drug users are not
criminals; they are sick," explained Interior Minister Fabio
Valencia Cossio. And government only wants to help.

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's Congress opened a three-day debate Monday on
the merits of legalizing marijuana for personal use, a policy backed
by three former Latin American presidents who warned that a
crackdown on drug cartels is not working.

Although President Felipe Calderon has opposed the idea, the
unprecedented forum shows legalizing marijuana is gaining support in
Mexico amid brutal drug violence.

Such a measure would be sure to strain relations with the United
States at a time when the two countries are stepping up cooperation
in the fight against drug trafficking. The congressional debate -
open to academics, experts and government officials - ends a day
before President Obama arrives in Mexico for talks on the drug war.

[snip]

The congressional discussion takes on a subject "that had been
taboo" in our country, said opposition lawmaker Javier Gonzalez,
adding that his Democratic Revolution Party supports legalizing
personal marijuana consumption.

"What we don't want is to criminalize youths for consuming or
possessing marijuana," he said.

[snip]

In 2006, Mexico backed off a law that would have abolished prison
sentences for drug possession in small amounts after the U.S.
protested.

Writing in The American Interest, esteemed political scientist
Francis Fukuyama called on the United States to do more to help
Mexico in its battle with the drug trade -- namely by boosting
security on both sides of the border and assisting reform of the
Mexican justice system. So far, so routine. But then Fukuyama made
an interesting observation.

The ultimate source of the problem, Fukuyama noted, is American
demand for illicit drugs -- and "the most straightforward way to
reduce demand, of course, would be legalization under a tightly
controlled regime."

[snip]

But then politics rushes in. "While legalization has been proposed
by many people over the years," Fukuyama writes, "it has very little
chance of being enacted by Congress, and therefore is not for the
time being a realistic policy choice."

[snip]

CNN's coverage of the bloodshed in Mexico has repeatedly raised
legalization as an option worth debating. That's a big change.

Critically, however, we lack the personal experience that people had
when they judged alcohol prohibition a failure. Most people today
don't know that drugs have not always been criminalized. Fewer still
know that when drugs were legal, they were not a source of ghettoes,
gang wars, and narco-states.

[snip]

The political barrier remains massive, but in politics
even the mightiest wall can turn to vapour with
startling speed -- a fact Fukuyama implicitly
acknowledged when he said legalization was not a
realistic policy choice "for the time being."

[snip]

The history of politics is stuffed with such transformation. Only 15
years ago, the NDP government of Ontario tore itself apart over a
modest plan to extend benefits to same-sex partners. Gay marriage?
Gay marriage was a fantasy. And today, that fantasy is law.

How much misery can a policy cause before it is acknowledged as a
failure and reversed? The U.S. "war on drugs" suggests there is no
upper limit. The country's implacable blend of prohibition and
punitive criminal justice is wrong-headed in every way: immoral in
principle, since it prosecutes victimless crimes, and in practice a
disaster of remarkable proportions. Yet for a U.S. politician to
suggest wholesale reform of this brainless regime is still seen as
an act of reckless self-harm.

Even a casual observer can see that much of the damage done in the
U.S. by illegal drugs is a result of the fact that they are illegal,
not the fact that they are drugs. Vastly more lives are blighted by
the brutality of prohibition, and by the enormous criminal networks
it has created, than by the substances themselves. This is true of
cocaine and heroin as well as of soft drugs such as marijuana. But
the assault on consumption of marijuana sets the standard for the
policy's stupidity.

Nearly half of all Americans say they have tried marijuana. That
makes them criminals in the eyes of the law. Luckily, not all of
them have been found out - but when one is grateful that most
law-breakers go undetected, there is something wrong with the law.

[snip]

The consequences of prohibition corrupt governments everywhere, and
the U.S. is no exception. Since a drug transaction has no victims in
the ordinary sense, witnesses to assist a prosecution are in short
supply. US drug-law enforcement tends to infringe civil liberties,
relying on warrantless searches, entrapment, extorted testimony in
the form of plea bargains, and so forth.

President Alvaro Uribe Has Not Given Up On His Campaign To Get
Personal Drug Use Outlawed.

[snip]

The Colombian Congress this month will begin discussing a bill
introduced by the government that would prohibit possession of any
drug and would punish addicts and drug users with mandatory clinical
treatment.

The bill would overturn a 1994 Constitutional Court sentence which
ruled that prohibiting the use of drugs violated the right to "free
development of personality" set forth in Colombia's constitution.
Since then, adults can possess up to 20 grams of marijuana and one
gram of cocaine for consumption in the privacy of their homes.

DRUG-USE SURVEY

The latest drug-use survey, conducted by the Uribe administration
last year and released in February, showed 2.3 percent of Colombians
admitted using marijuana at least once in the past year, while less
than 1 percent admitted using cocaine in the last 12 months. In the
United States, 5.8 percent used marijuana and 0.8 percent used
cocaine, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health
sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

[snip]

"If [the government bill] is approved, Colombia will not be a
country free of drugs. It will be a less free country," wrote
Alfredo Rangel, a security analyst who usually supports Uribe's
initiatives, in a recent column.

[snip]

"Drug users are not criminals; they are sick. The state will offer
the possibility of rehabilitation," Interior Minister Fabio Valencia
Cossio said on presenting the text of the bill.

Known to police as a tireless soldier for the war on drugs, Jon
assists with the arrest of a pot smoker. Deciding that the only way to
understand the true effects of narcotics is through experience, Jon
tries them all at once.

Since 1990, IHRA's annual international harm reduction conferences
(formerly known as the `International Conferences on the Reduction of
Drug Related Harm') have grown in importance and become the main
meeting point for all those interested in harm reduction around the
world.

In April 2009, the conference will once again come to Thailand, taking
place at the Imperial Queen's Park Hotel in Bangkok from the 20th to
the 23rd April 2009.

A few weeks ago, the president dismissed the idea of ending marijuana
prohibition as a joke. Now that he's in Mexico and seeing first hand
the awful effects of prohibition, it's time to make sure he takes it
seriously.

Re "It's time to seriously consider ending prohibition on drugs" (
Viewpoints, April 5): Prohibition, whether of alcohol or the illegal
drugs du jour, never works in the sense that it fails to eliminate
the problem of drug abuse and addiction. What it does is create an
entirely new set of problems and costs through supporting violent,
organized crime, and the costs of incarceration and criminal
justice. Which is more costly to society: a small percentage of
legal drug addicts ( who will probably be on welfare, but that's
cheaper than jail ), or financing the Taliban and gangs at home,
destabilizing Mexican society by corrupting police forces, funding
the FARC leftist rebels in Colombia and so many drug-related murders
. not to mention billions upon billions of dollars on interdiction
and incarceration? It's not a question of whether drug use is bad.
It's a practical question of how best to deal with the existence of
addictive substances in the natural world.

The news media are rife with stories about Mexican drug cartels
operating throughout the United States and drug-related violence
threatening U.S. cities near the border. Americans are becoming
reluctant to cross into Mexican towns for fear of getting caught in
the crossfire.

Do we need another reason to end the abominable war on "drugs" (a
war on people, actually)?

You read that right. The drug trade is violent because the U.S.
government persists in trying to eradicate the manufacture, sale,
and consumption of certain substances. If there were no drug war,
there would be no drug violence. Those who doubt this should ask
themselves why violent cartels aren't fighting over the tobacco and
liquor trades.

In America we play a dangerous game. We pretend that if the
government outlaws a product - such as heroin or cocaine or
marijuana - it vanishes. But we know it's not true. The product
simply goes into the black market, where anyone who wants it can get
it. They still can't keep drugs out of prisons!

The key question is, who provides it? When a product is banned,
respectable people tend to stay out of the trade. That leaves it to
those who have few scruples - including scruples about the use of
violence. Indeed, the black market rewards such people. If a party
reneges on a contract for heroin, the other has to take matters into
his own hands because he can't sue. Cutthroats prosper.

So we shouldn't be surprised when violence erupts between drug gangs
and harms innocent people. While each perpetrator of mayhem is
responsible for his actions, we must also condemn the entity that
created the environment in which violence pays.

That entity is government. As long as it enforces the ban on drugs,
there will be violence within the drug trade. And there will be more
than that: police brutality, particularly in minority communities;
erosion of civil liberties; corruption of the legal system; prisons
full of nonviolent drug consumers; development of more-potent
substances; and the enticement of youth - the lure of forbidden
fruit.

Those are only the domestic effects. By trying to suppress the
growing of coca and poppy in foreign countries, the U.S. government
makes enemies for America, creates constituencies for terrorist and
guerilla movements, and helps to finance their operations.

Nothing good comes from prohibition. Yet the evils of prohibition
are blamed on drug consumers and guns!

So why is there a "war on drugs"? It provides a nice living for
demagogic politicians, DEA thugs, and all kinds of "drug-abuse
experts" who gladly accept taxpayer money for services no one would
pay for willingly. There are big bucks in prohibition, compliments
of the taxpayers. The only people less eager for an end to it are
the cartel bosses, whose profits would evaporate overnight.

Americans have been systematically propagandized by the
aforementioned people into believing that chaos would rule if drugs
were legal. How absurd. Most who abstain from forbidden drugs today
wouldn't start using them if they became legal tomorrow. Besides, as
former drug czar Bill Bennett acknowledges, most consumers of
illegal substances are self-responsible. We aren't aware of them
because they support their families, hold decent jobs, and pay their
bills. Contrary to the anti-drug government-industrial complex, the
danger is not in the drug; it's in people and how they choose to use
drugs. A drug habit is a choice. True, some people harm themselves
with illegal drugs, but other people harm themselves with things
that are perfectly legal, such as the drug we call alcohol. To the
extent people get hurt because black-market drugs are impure, again
the blame belongs largely with government. An open market would
offer consumer protection.

In a free society adults would be free to ingest what they want.
Drug consumers would be responsible for their actions, but as long
as they were peaceful the law would leave them alone.

The drug war should end simply because it is unfit for a free
society. Perhaps the latest violence will finally prompt people to
think about this outrage.

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom
Foundation, author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare
State, and editor of The Freeman magazine. Visit his blog "Free
Association" at http://www.sheldonrichman.com/

Did you know America ranks the lowest in education but the highest
in drug use? It's nice to be number one, but we can fix that. All we
need to do is start the war on education. If it's anywhere near as
successful as our war on drugs, in no time we'll all be hooked on
phonics." - Leighann Lord

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